Pittsburgh’s Prevailing Wage January 8 2010
Montgomery County commissioner & far-left progressive candidate for Governor Joe Hoeffel has injected himself into the story over Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s veto of a prevailing wage bill.
Mr. Hoeffel’s intervention in the city of Pittsburgh dispute reverberated in the competition for the Democratic nomination in that its target, Mr. Ravenstahl, is a close ally of Mr. Onorato, who is one of Mr. Hoeffel’s chief competitors. The North Side native is expected to report a fundraising total later this month that will dwarf Mr. Hoeffel’s war chest.
Speaking after Mr. Ravenstahl’s inauguration earlier this week, Mr. Onorato professed to be unconcerned by Mr. Hoeffel’s foray into his political backyard, or by his overall strategy of more liberal elements of the party’s base.
“I think Mr. Hoeffel may be surprised by the support I have with progressives, including progressives in [southeastern Pennsylvania],” Mr. Onorato said.
Asked for his reaction to the veto, Mr. Onorato declined to criticize his North Side neighbor. Without offering details, however, Mr. Onorato did say that he favored the general concept of a prevailing wage for projects supported by local government economic development funds.
Despite Mr. Hoeffel’s embrace of the Pittsburgh proposal, his own county has no similar measure on its books.
However, his co-campaign manager Lauren Townsend said he likes the idea and added that he had directed his staff to explore the idea of a similar requirement for Montgomery County.
The prevailing wage is an average of wages for a particular job (trade, position) in a certain area (in this case Pittsburgh), and it would affect projects with at least $100K in city money or 100,000 square feet in size. Which means that any city project or any office development. Mandating pay like this tends to discourage development. Ravenstahl was right to veto it.
The news that Hoeffel plans to “bring it home” to Montco is troubling. The Philly suburbs have long the beneficiaries of the City of Philadelphia’s fiscal messes and business unfriendly revenue schemes. Indeed, we can point to the King of Prussia and Fort Washington and Pharm belt developments as evidence of the migration.
Chester and Lehigh counties (especially) will be thanking you in a few years for their new jobs, Joe.
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